Resident Evil 5 - On this day

After the great success of Resident Evil 4, fans of the Capcom horror series were excited about the future. Resident Evil 5 was supposed to continue in the footsteps of its predecessor, only this time on the more powerful PS3 and X360 console platforms. But there were concerns about the final product because the director of the four was no longer at Capcom, and the game was designed for cooperative play.

In Resident Evil 5, we return to the role of Chris Redfield who had an unfinished business with the villain of the first game, Albert Wesker. Chris was joined on an adventure in Africa by new partner Sheva Alomar, after having to bury his previous partner Jill Valentine. However, it quickly turned out that her death had been faked.

Resident Evil 5 was a kind of conclusion to one story, i.e. Wesker’s chapter. The game tried to round out the story of the discovery and origin of the virus that resulted in Umbrella’s incident in Raccoon City, and the cradle of the virus was right in Africa.

Resident Evil 5 gameplay hasn’t changed too much since the foursome. He was action-minded and limited so the characters couldn’t move while aiming, which in 2009 seemed a bit strange. The inventory system changed, the number of puzzles decreased, and everything was subordinated to cooperative gaming in pairs, networks, or local in split-screen performance. Due to that, the game was more linear than four, and it was a bit shorter.

Resident Evil 5 picked up very good ratings upon release and sold the most copies for one Resident Evil game to date. A few months after the release of the consoles, a PC version followed. A year later another campaign called Lost in Nightmares was added to the game in which Jill Valentine was controlled. That episode was included in a special edition of the game called Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition.

When sales of the standard and Gold editions of the game add up, Resident Evil 5 is still the best-selling game in its series with a total of 12.6 million copies sold. Even today, it is possible to play it on current platforms.